The Prince and His Slave [REWRITTEN]

Chapter 8 - [Hiding]

– Chione –

Today was the dreaded day where I was expected to clean an entire throne room. I had been here for an entire week now, trying my best to do a good job, and even after saving the lives of a fellow maid and a child, Aziza still didn't remove me from this horrible assignment.

And when she left me at the throne room, all alone... I knew it was going to be a challenge.

The throne room was, unsurprisingly, huge. It was the biggest room I had seen in my life and I swear, I thought I would never finish cleaning it.

The ceiling of the throne room was very high up, and it opened up to the night sky, revealing the moon and the stars... which, I suppose, was a little nice.

All along the sides of the throne room were very thick columns that rose high up to the roof, and between the wall and the column looked to be a walkway that lead to the east, west and southern exits of the room.

And at the northern end of the throne room was the big, golden throne, sitting on a dais with steps that led up to it. On both sides of the throne were two massive sphinxes as well as torches and decorations.

Everything in the throne room was nicely decorated, from the walls to the columns... there were a lot of colourful paintings on the wall of the great gods and what I assumed were previous pharaohs, along with some text.

I couldn't read well, so all I could really do was use the symbols I recognized to figure out who was who. I knew all the men with the crowns had to be Pharaohs. And for the gods, I could see multiple pictures of Horus, who had a falcon head and Osiris, who was green.

I knew all about the gods, so I had no problem identifying them as I stared in awe at the beautiful paintings.

It was the pharaohs that I had trouble with. I could, in no way, recognize one pharaoh pointing from another unless I could read the cartouche next to their painting with their names.

And I couldn't.

But that was fine.

So I ignored that fact and continued to look around, wondering bright and beautiful the throne room must have been in the mornings.

But it was going to take me hours to clean it, so I had no time to waste.

I dropped the wet cloth onto the floor and started to scrub it as fast as I could.

– Arius –

I couldn't sleep. I found myself lying awake in my bed for an hour or so before I stood up and began pacing. This wasn't a rare situation for me. A lot of times, my random naps throughout the day caused me to stay awake for the most of the night. Pacing usually helped to get me tired.

But after a short while of pacing, I walked out onto my balcony to get some fresh air. The nights were almost always fairly quiet on palace grounds. Outside in the town, there were more people still up but usually at the palace, everyone was asleep. If they were awake, however, they remained silent.

People usually did not like the nights here. They were filled with darkness and uncertainty and fear. I thought otherwise, though. I liked the night. A lot. The moon was a beautiful, it was quiet and I always had a lot of time to sit around and think.

The breeze was absolutely perfect. It was cooling and relaxing and I took a deep breath, feeling at peace.

For some time, I was deep in thought as I leaned against the edge of the balcony. Ever since that servant girl had her baby, a lot of people were talking about this surprising servant midwife. This was probably because my pregnant aunt could not forget about the event and told everyone she knew about what she saw.